


it's not what you leave behind

by Drake, Ghrelt



Series: we're meant to find each other [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: BAMF Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Blood, Body Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Temporary Character Death, What else is new, Whump, booker's a shit, nicky cooks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25510741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drake/pseuds/Drake, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghrelt/pseuds/Ghrelt
Summary: It's what you take with you.When things go bad for them, they go really bad. Good thing the immortal warriors can think on their feet.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: we're meant to find each other [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1841152
Comments: 62
Kudos: 511





	it's not what you leave behind

**Author's Note:**

> every time ghrelt and i write something it gets longer than the last??? 
> 
> anyway, enjoy some good ol whump, and feed us your comments so that we start writing another thing c:

It’s been a year since they last met up. They liked to see each other every so often, especially as the world seemed to grow larger and smaller at once. And if they happen to pick the location of their meeting in a place that’s currently undergoing tumultuous upheaval, or is about to, well. That’s just the instinct of fighting wars for millennia. They could taste it in the air. And if they were around, then maybe they could help.

This time, they’re in Tunisia. It is the region Joe is from, and he always enjoys getting to experience, to show, the beauty of it. The art and the architecture and the food. Nicky always surprises him, learning recipes from the whole world, but particularly when he finds something that tastes _almost_ like the food they ate before they knew of immortality. 

It is unfortunate, the way the unrest hangs in the air. A tension among the people, a distrust aimed at - and earned by - the police. They’ve seen it so many times before. Joe knows it will come to a flashpoint soon. Perhaps they will be here, when it does.

His concerns are proven right, to all their dismay.

The crusades were a nightmare and Nicky can’t look back on his actions there without shame. He helped invade a country because the people there believed in the ‘wrong’ god. What a stupid reason for anything. If a land is considered holy by many who hold differing beliefs, is that not evidence of its holiness? And is not the best way to honor that, to share it in peace? 

And is not the best way to desecrate it, to shed blood over its possession. 

It’s why he doesn’t fight wars anymore. No more a soldier. A weapon, to be pointed at the enemy of whoever’s in power at the moment. But they do help. He and the other immortals, they find little places they can make a difference. Small moments in time. Destiny.

Perhaps God? Perhaps not. Believing in a god’s divinity because he returned from the dead sort of gets turned on its head when you share the same fate. And then again. And again.

A lot of times.

And then when you meet someone who has lived and died the same, who believes in a different god? That blows your whole belief system out of the water.

No matter. He believes in what the man in the Bible stood for. That is the code he tries to live by.

So they’re here. Once more amidst unrest. People will die. Many people will die. They can’t save them all. But they can make a difference. Nico believes that with every fibre of his being. Otherwise why is he still here?

Otherwise why are any of them here?

Joe is of the same mind. It came with the territory of loving a man for nine hundred years. They tended to agree on more than they disagreed on, now. And the disagreements were mostly for entertainments’ sake. Such as pineapples on his precious pizza. Joe laughed every time Nicky raged about that particular one.

It starts as many revolutions do. One final injustice to break the tenuous peace that existed before, finite and limited. 

They don’t know exactly what starts it. Only that suddenly, it’s all over Booker’s internet. Not the news. That in itself is alarming. There are no special reports, no news blasts. Silence and the weather - hot and sunny, again, as always - and everything continuing on as normal.

So when Booker shows them the numerous, unending, videos of protest, of gas canisters and rubber bullets and _tanks in the streets_ , they go. It is not the battlefield they are used to. Turning guns upon the police will just make the army shoot on civilians. But there is certainly _something_ they can do.

It prickles up Nicky’s spine. The whispers in the streets. Sidelong glances. Curtains flicked aside and back down before anyone can see in. The old familiar creeping feeling of something building around them. 

With it comes that resolution, embedded back before the crusades. To help as he can.

But how best to help? Without being remembered as anything more than a few faces in a crowd? It is a tenuous balance they must achieve. To do the most good they can, as ghosts.

That’s why Booker and his internet are in charge of the missions. Nicky’s been clueless about the news since newspapers started becoming scarce.

So it’s Booker that finds their jobs in this century. Finds the places they can be of most use. And in this case, especially with that internet, they need to change their appearances. Before they show up in anyone’s photos, or videos. Joe shaves his beard and his hair short. Andy cuts her shoulder-length hair down to the same length as Joe’s. Even Booker is made to sacrifice his beard, make his hair shorter. Nicky’s hair happened to be fairly short already, and Joe winces when he shaves it all off.

After Nicky finally gets over the shock of Joe’s bald chin, (does he ever really?) he spends a lot of time staring off into space, running his hand over his stubble. He says it is much cooler in the heat. And then sleeps with a scarf wrapped around his head.

It would all grow back soon enough, anyway.

They equip themselves with aid for protesters, small things they can hand to those who are injured - not that any of them know how to use those kits, save for Nicky - but it is something to carry, to lend help with. 

As for the rest, there is no plan. Be there when the injustices happen, and, at best, take some of the brunt for the civilians who won’t lose the bruise in a minute. 

Nicky stocked up on the first aid supplies before they reunited. Bandages. Sutures. Burn cream. Antibiotics. His medic training isn’t exactly up to date but any aid is better than none. And the war embedded knowledge he feels in his veins a century later. 

One does not simply forget some things.

He stays close to Joe as they move. As they prepare. Always ready to take his flank position and cover him. Never more than a room apart. And closer even than that when he feels the shift. The tide turning. That buzzing under his skin like electricity amplified until he can’t see anything, hear anything else.

And then it’s upon them.

The crash of protesters and riot police is loud and it’s _different_ somehow, they’re more _violent_. Bashing in legs and the arrests begin, grabbing anyone too close and dragging them off to places the activist groups may not be able to get them back out of. 

They do what they can, pulling protesters away from the police before the pepper spray and zipties come out, shielding them and making it hard for the military to ‘do their jobs’. A line that Joe hates to the very core of his being. An excuse to punish and brutalize, for nothing. 

They seem to have the most impact at night. After curfew, when the military is out patrolling, looking for a fight. They help those still stuck outside to duck into the shadows, to make it back home past dinner and into darkness and the safety of hearth and home. Not arrested, not yet, where they can rest and come back another day to fight. 

It’s those grateful faces that stick with Joe the most. Not the ones of the students. Of their parents, as he helps them get back to their doors, slipping in, the door shutting quietly, just a glimpse of aching, overwhelming relief as their children return home. 

He cannot do anything for those who have already been caught. Nothing save for keep others from the same fate. So that’s what they do.

Only a few days in, and they’re exhausted. All day protesting, all night helping the strays avoid the curfew, and they haven’t slept more than four hours a night since they first got here.

But the word is getting out. A trickle of journalist reports. More social media videos. The revolution is a catalyst, a chain reaction, spreading to nearby countries, each growing louder before its upheaval. They can’t help them all. But they can still help here.

\--- 

Two weeks of protest, of revolution, of demands for justice and change, and the journalists grow bolder. Get closer, need to tell the truth and show the world what is happening. This seems to egg on the police, who grow more brutal. Like crazed animals, cornered by cameras, they lash out instead of realizing this will make everything worse. That the world will not sit by and tolerate these abuses. 

So the pigs turn their sights on the press, next.

Nicky is in silent awe of them; these men and women, many of them so, so young, fighting with information. Facing down thugs with the law on their side and weapons in their hands, with nothing but a camera, or a phone. With a belief in the truth so vital and so strong that it defies all logic. They’re babies. Children fighting with the strength of conviction and little else. He loves them. Every last one. And he smiles every time they get a video out. Every time he and Andy and Booker and Joe sneak another group past a patrol. Every time another slips through the cracks of brutality and vengeance and control.

These are the people he thought he was in the crusades. 

The violence turns from the press, to anyone holding a phone. And while a journalist might have signed up to wade into danger to tell the truth, these children did _not_. 

It’s them that Joe dives in front of police for. He gets a broken rib for his trouble, but he manages to take the blow convincingly enough that no one thinks he’s been grievously injured. 

That’s just in the morning. 

It escalates by noon.

Joe doesn’t know what did it. What rock was thrown at the wrong officer. Only that the shields that were turned against protesters are suddenly melting away, replaced by batons and handcuffs and guns that fire rubber bullets. The arrests begin, and damned if Joe will just sit by and let them happen. He pulls his pistol from his waistband and presses it into Nicky’s hands before he wades through the crowd and straight for the police. 

He’s shouting, drawing attention, pleading in Arabic with the police. “ _Peace- wait! Wait, wait, stop!_ ” Putting himself between the swing of weapons and the unshielded heads of students. They duck away, eyes wide in fright, all of them scrambling to get back and away, to dodge this round of arrests so they can return before the next.

Nicky moves to follow without a moment’s thought. Finds himself dragged back by the arm and held against a wall by a hand far stronger and more lethal than the narrow frame it was attached to might imply.

Eyes flashed green, pupils dilated and holding his. “You so much as move I will tear your throat out. You do us no good by exposing us all. Joe is making his move. That leaves us one: sit back, watch, and get his ass out of there when we can. Understood?”

In the moment, Nicky wants to kill her. To raise his knife and slash across her throat and step over her cooling corpse to _get his Yusuf back_. He closes his eyes. Forces out a breath. Rolls his shoulders. And finally nods. “Yes. I- Thank you.”

She releases her hold on his throat. Pats his shoulder. “You with us?”

He nods again.

“Alright let’s see what we can do to get your fool heart out of this mess.” 

Joe is giving them an opening. Time and space to pull the innocents out. He can stall the longest against the police, looking as he does. With intimate knowledge of his homeland, though dulled by centuries of absence.

It is only when one of the soldiers grabs him by the shoulder and shoves him back beyond the police line and into the empty intersection, surrounded by tanks, that he wonders if he miscalculated. If they’re going to shoot him and he’ll have to play dead or risk their secret becoming known. 

“ _They’ve done nothing wrong, let them be-”_ he attempts, again, watching as the protest crowd fades, a wave pulling back at low tide, pulling together the energy to crash over again. As they disappear from the street, some reappear in the windows. Watching on in worry. Or horror. He cannot rightly see their faces, as a soldier stomps his calf and sends him to his knees, even though his hands are up. 

He could kill them. He could, so easily.

But that would make things worse, instead of better. How many innocents would die if he tried to protect himself here? 

So he falls to his knees on the corner where the two streets meet, looking down at the ground, his hands held up in the air. “ _Please, you do not want to do this_ ,” he says, even though he knows they very much do. 

He has made himself an easy target. Easier to justify hurting him than the young faces that stare out from the windows, phones held out and recording.

“I’ll get them out,” Booker promises, already ushering people down a side street and through a house that leads away from the police-occupied street.

Andy takes a deep breath. “Good. Nicky, go with him.”

Nicky all but snarls at her. 

“Two minutes,” she insists. “Cover their backs or everything Joe’s doing right now was for _nothing_.”

Goddammit. She’s right.

“I’ll keep eyes on him,” she promises, and there’s a reason she’s staying behind and sending Nicky away. She can’t trust him to hold back. To keep from rushing out into the crowd and stirring up something these people will pay the price for.

And well he knows it. He grits his teeth and turns away. “See that you do,” he says in a tone that would get his ass kicked in any other situation.

Hell, it still might later. Assuming they all make it out of here unscathed enough to feel an ass-kicking. Nicky goes, ducking into the passage along with wide-eyed young men and women. Brave, but terrified. And helps lead the group through the hidden passages in the city, to safety.

It takes longer than two minutes, though not much. As soon as the last kid’s clear he and Booker rush back to the street where they left Joe. Where a crowd is forming, and Andy’s taken up position laying across a rooftop where she can see down past the line of clashing police and protesters.

They’ve shoved Joe from his knees to the ground, smashing his cheek into the asphalt as they cuff his hands behind his back, using metal. Oh, so he’s earned the real handcuffs, has he?

“ _History will not be kind to you_ ,” he snarls, shoving against the arms holding him down. The sounds of the crowd around the street is different now. Joe thinks the ones he was trying to protect are gone. Which means an escape might be possible, now. He does not imagine it would be easy to get out of a prison. He aims not to end up there.

He struggles one way, gets the asshole on top of him to shift his weight, and then lurches in the other direction, shoving him off and scrambling to his feet, gaze snapping around, picking the path of least resistance, the fewest police, as he charges for the crowd and safety. 

He doesn’t see the pipe.

One moment he’s staggering to his feet, the next sliding on his face on the asphalt, chin tearing open as it catches. His leg lancing pain from the impact that took him out.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he spits, and then the pipe comes again, and he can’t help the roar of agony as it crashes down onto his legs, breaking them with a sickening crack that he’s all too viscerally familiar with.

And then, for good measure, it comes down once more. He can’t hold back the scream as he feels both bones in his other leg shatter.

The soldier doesn’t stop.

He doesn’t even notice the grate beneath him until the pulverised muscle of his calf starts pushing down into it. Between the metal slats like so much meat.

So much meat _still attached to him_. Still afire with nerves and pumping blood and trying to stay alive despite the onslaught.

The sight only goads the officer on as he keeps hitting that leg, over and over and over again. No one notices his other leg healing, the bone shifting back into place. The bastard is too busy enjoying the way it pushes his left leg further and further into the metal. Brutal and cruel.

Joe can’t help the sounds that escape him with every blow. Death is easier than this, but even that won’t help him. He can’t let himself pass out, even as he hears his bones breaking into smaller and smaller shards. And not even his cries can mask the squelching of his flesh being mashed between the grating.

There is a moment of pause. A hush falling over the street. Police and protesters alike forgetting their roles in the shock of that brutality. Staring at him, at the centerpoint of it. The eye of the storm, for a brief heartbeat. 

And then a feeling that Joe would like to _never_ experience again, as his leg starts to heal. Finding that it can’t separate itself from the grate, it starts to heal _around_ it, and the only convenient thing about this is that when he throws up from the pain, it falls away into the sewer line.

Bones have this distinctive noise when they break. And when one has broken theirs thousands upon thousands of times, they know the sound. Even from a distance. Andy winces as the scream follows. Watches as they strike his lower leg, over and over and over again. Soaking his pants in crimson until little shards of white begin to appear through the fabric.

And then Nicky returns. He hears the cries just as he reaches the roof and if it wasn’t for Booker, the underhanded little shit, he’d have run off that rooftop to save Joe already.

But Booker knows him as well as Andy. Or well enough. To trip him as he hears the familiar scream. Sending him sprawling and giving Booker enough time to get him in a chokehold, arm twisted behind his back and knee holding him down. “We need smart, not brave here,” he hisses into Nicky’s ear. You need to _think_! For Joe. Don’t make us have to rescue two,” he half-begs.

Andy glances back, approving. “Every second you fuck around with this half-cocked nonsense is another second they have him,” she says, low and threatening. “So are you going to fucking help, or keep making us stop you?”

Oh he is sorely tempted. To twist against that hold and break his own arm to get away. To crush Booker’s windpipe and jump down to the street below and-

And then what? Break his own legs on the landing? Get shot? Let them have someone to torture in front of Joe too? Because Nicky knows all too well that watching him being hurt would hurt Joe more than what he’s already suffering. Later, he is going to punch a wall until he’s broken every bone in his hands. But for now, he lets himself go lax under Booker.

He gives in. “Let’s get him back,” he says, meeting her gaze.

Booker lets him go all at once, backing up away from him almost too fast to be believed.

Smart. Nicky wanted to take a swing, just because.

He crawls to the edge of the building by Andy’s side. “What’s the plan, boss?” he says, ignoring the clawing panic in his chest and the way Yusuf’s screams tear through his psyche.

“We can’t shoot them,” Andy says. “Can’t start a civil war over this. They’d shoot him, and we can’t guarantee we could get back to him before someone saw.” She’s looking down the street. “Need to get them to leave fast enough they forget to take him with them.” And then it occurs to her. “Booker. You brought your kit?” She means the explosive one.

“Course,” he says, his voice rough, as it always is when he’s stressed. 

“Set something up. Something big. Blow up a car or some infrastructure. Make it unclear whose side did it. Get them to go investigate.”

“I think I might have a better idea,” he says. 

“Go on.” Andy was open to them; she was not the leader because she was the only one with ideas.

More of Joe’s screams echo in the street below. “How about you trust me and instead of explaining I just do it?”

“Fine. Go. You know how to find us when you’re done.”

“Might need a pickup by then. But yeah.” Keeping low, he jogs to the steps down and disappears.

“We need to distract them,” Nicky says. “They-

They’re torturing Joe. There has to be something they can do.

“Throwing rocks won’t help him any,” Andy says simply. It’s all there is on the roof. If they move too soon, they’ll only make it harder on Booker to drag the police away. And if they move too aggressively, they’ll just shoot Joe and be done with it.

He presses his face to her arm, shoulders heaving.

She doesn’t look at him, gaze held on Joe. Watching as the beating goes on and on and on. “I know,” she says, resting her cheek against his forehead for a moment. “Just a little longer. Give Booker time.”

Booker doesn’t waste any, taking advantage of the distracted police watching the spectacle and scurrying his way over to a nearby police vehicle. Jackpot. It’s unlocked. Unattended. He slides in behind the wheel and starts it up, whooping out the window and throwing a grenade into another police car before putting his in gear and tearing down the sidewalk, narrowly dodging police as he makes his escape.

A very Booker solution.

Andy can’t deny its efficacy. The police immediately shout, and they’ve more or less instantly forgotten Joe, who is no longer putting up a fight, half curled onto the asphalt, whimpering low. Booker makes for a more interesting target. Something to hunt. 

The officers take off after him, leaving the line of police holding back the protesters on their own. They are not going to last long without being overwhelmed. 

“Time for the smoke bombs?” Nicky says. They won’t get a better opening than this.

“Yep.” Andy reaches into her bag, the one that held her axe, and pulls out a pair of smoke bombs, handing one to Nicky. He needs this. To throw the first stone, so to speak.

He lobs it high overhead so they won’t be able to tell where it came from, landing it not far from where Joe’s being made example of in the street, whispering a soft, _“Forgive me, love,”_ in Arabic to himself. Wrapping his scarf across his face, he hooks a hand on the edge of the roof, turning to scrabble his feet down until he’s hanging. Then he lets go and the landing jars all the way from his ankles to his neck, but he doesn’t break anything.

And then he’s running at them. Ignoring the chaos as the remaining police shout to each other, searching for the source of this new attack through the billowing grey. He needs to get Joe out. Nothing else matters.

Nicky slides to his knees beside Joe, pulling up the man’s scarf to cover his nose and lips. “I am here,” he says, though he’s not sure Joe can hear him through the din.

He looks down, and nearly vomits. The leg. Joe’s leg. There’s nothing left, really. But it’s still trying to heal. It will take many minutes to push out of the grating and they don’t have that.

They have seconds, and Nicky arrives at a horrifying solution so quickly he’s more than a little repulsed at himself.

Long years as a warrior will do that to a person. Show the most practical option, no matter how painful. How awful.

Andy takes down the guy with the pipe with a hard punch to the throat while Nicky is still surveying the damage. She comes to the same conclusion he did, and in less time. Meets his gaze, blinking back tears from the smoke. “Let me,” she says, muffled behind her kerchief.

Nicky shakes his head. “No. I’ll do it. Cover us.” And holds his hand out.

An axe has better heft than a sword. The weight. The balance. Where it hits, it hits over less area with more force.

It is a much better tool for field amputation.

She hands it over, and Nicky meets Joe’s gaze over the labrys.

Joe doesn’t hear anything after the smoke starts, besides shouting and screaming, but that swiftly ceases to matter. He knows the hands pulling his scarf up. Drags his head up to look, and sees Nicky holding Andy’s axe, alone in the smoke, everything else obscured. He doesn’t even hesitate. He nods, immediately. 

As much as it’s going to hurt, it’ll be a swifter pain than what his minced leg is currently suffering. 

Nicky takes a breath. Squares his shoulders. Goes to a quiet place in his head where he doesn’t have to think about this. Shuts the voice screaming inside his head that it doesn’t want to do this in a little box and throws it in the corner, turning his back on it.

And swings that godforsaken axe.

The blood spurts up in an arc as he feels it cleave clear through skin, sinew, and bone, right at the knee. It splashes hot across his face and the urge to vomit burns again in his throat. 

But Joe’s free.

It slices through his leg with a pain entirely different to that of the pipe, and he manages to bite down the cry for Nicky’s sake, letting out a quiet wheeze as he tastes blood. He must have bit through his tongue, then. 

The new agony of his leg being severed is somehow better _and_ worse than the exquisite torture that was his leg trying to heal as it was being mashed into paste. As soon as his leg is free of its more ruined half he rolls away, torn between needing to curl in on himself and needing to get the fuck out of here.

Andy stands with her back to them, gun trained at the ground and eyes keen on the nearest police. They haven’t spotted them yet, but it’s only a matter of time. She reaches back and Nicky presses the axe into her hand before bending to lift Joe.

Joe reaches for Nicky as soon as he sees his arms, now axe-less. The scarf helps against the smoke, though it feels like he’s choking on it. On it, or the blood or the pain, he doesn’t know. He clings to Nicky’s shoulders as he’s lifted, whining low as the lurch upward makes him feel like his gut’s dropped with it.

Or is that the sudden lightheadedness?

“ _Fuck_ ,” he breathes, his head resting heavy on Nicky’s shoulder.

Between the blood and the gaping wound and the way Joe’s missing leg alters the balance, Nicky has a hard time getting a good hold on him. Finally he just scoops him up, feeling the gore of Joe’s mangled knee oozing blood down his arm.

“That way,” Andy says, nodding towards a nearby alley. “I’ll cover you.”

Nicky pulls Joe in to his chest and takes off at a jog.

They leave a trail of red in their wake, a trailing line that connects the pieces that are Joe.

The bounce of Nicky’s footsteps is rhythmic, mesmerizing. Joe doesn’t realize he’s fading until one step bleeds into the next and his eyes don’t open again.

Nicky feels it. How Joe begins to sag in his arms. And then goes completely limp as he exhales a long breath.

And doesn’t breathe back in.

His eyes are already leaking tears from the smoke but they sting sharper anyways. His arms clench around Joe. 

Around his-

Nicky _killed_ him, and he’s not sure he’ll ever forgive himself, even if Joe does wake.

Why didn’t he use a tourniquet? Why even take the chance?

“Stop it,” Andy says from behind him. “This would have happened anyways if we’d left him there. Give it time.” Her voice is gentle, but firm.

The wait is interminable. The spaces where Nicky takes a breath and Joe does not feel like an eternity. 

Joe is heavier with every step, and the stone in Nicky’s chest aches so much more than his arms do.

As ever, in the back of his head is the question: Is now the time? Will this be the last goodbye.

A millennia is so long. A precious gift beyond what most could even imagine. He’s not ready yet.

He never, ever will be.

Joe gasps awake with a lurch, jostling the restraints holding him to- to Nicky? Not restraints. His arms. He’s still running, and Joe has no idea how long it’s been since- since he passed out? Died? He thinks he died. The return was more abrupt. His leg burns, and this is new- he’s never lost this much before. The whole of his leg is afire, and he groans, a deep, hoarse thing.

Something expands in Nicky’s chest and he feels like he’s been holding his breath all this time Joe was gone. His next breath is nearly as ragged as Joe’s, though for an entirely different reason. Relief swamps him and he has to pause a moment, leaning on a wall as he waits for the sudden sense of vertigo to pass.

“Welcome back,” Andy says, patting Joe’s shoulder as she moves to take point. “One of these missions you’ll pull your own weight and we'll all die of shock.”

Nicky lets out a bark of laughter and just like that the moment’s past. Joe is alive. In his arms. They’re going to be fine.

Assuming the police don’t find them and they actually manage to reunite with Booker.

Joe laughs too, a wheezing sound, and he buries his face in the crook of Nicky’s neck. A soft, silent, _I’m here. I’m still here._ “Try and tell me they’d have stayed as distracted arresting one of your European faces,” he counters, doing his best to ignore the pain of his leg trying to _regrow itself_.

“When we get out of here, I am locking you in a box and sitting on it,” Nicky sputters, and his voice comes out uneven. “Every time you pull something like that you age me a hundred years.”

“What, you’d sit on the box and not on me?” Joe asks, aiming to bring him back with the levity. Teasing, reassuring. He’s still here. He hasn’t lost him yet.

“You are very slippery and it is difficult to seduce your way out of a box,” he says with a glower as they duck inside a dilapidated old building and Andy signals Nicky to stop.

“I’m sure I can convince you otherwise,” Joe answers, pressing a kiss under Nicky’s jaw as they pull to a stop in the dark and dusty building.

Nicky ignores his lover’s feeble attempts at distracting him. The sound his leg makes as he heals is a relief, but it is not remotely sexy. Nor is the fact that Joe is still in significant pain, however he tries to hide it. “Tell it to the box,” he says.

Joe laughs. At least it’s a distraction from the pain, to hear his love’s voice. “I certainly will. And you, as well.”

“Wait here,” says Andy. “I’ll find us a car.”

“Why do I love you? You do this to me over and over again and it tears my heart out each and every time and you refuse to stop,” he huffs. But the words are fond, and a smile pulls at the corner of his lips.

Joe reaches up to cup Nicky’s cheek, tilting his face down to meet his gaze. “As if you do not do the same to me,” he says, warmth in his voice, in his eyes. He strokes a thumb under Nicky’s eyes, under the haunted weight in them.

“Terrible burden, to be bound to one such as myself.” He perches on the edge of a counter, pulling Joe in against his chest and closing his eyes for just a moment. Willing his world to right itself.

“Truly. It does have its benefits, though.” Even in teasing, he’s unable to deny how smitten he is. How much Nicky is his entire world. The centerpoint of his universe, upon which his existence orbits.

“It’s the penis, isn’t it?” he says, squinting out of one eye.

Joe laughs. “No, love. It is the warmth in your eyes, and the gentleness of your touch. The sweet taste of your lips.” And so much more. So, so much more.

He glances around the room. “Did someone insult us while I wasn’t paying attention?”

The poetry usually comes out when he’s angry.

Joe exhales in amusement. “Did you not ask me to do that more often while out of danger, too?”

“Yes but I didn’t think you were paying attention.” Or he somehow thought the words were tied to the anger. Like they could only escape if they bonded first.

“I pay attention to everything you say, darling.” And then immediately after, “okay, _almost_ everything.”

“Like stop using the herbs I’m trying to cook with, to flirt? Like no sex in the kitchen?”

“I paid attention. I just _chose_ to disobey.”

Nicky spares a glance at the leg. “Are you ever happy that it just grows the tissue out from the limb, instead of forming a tiny one and growing it back to size?”

Joe snorts, reeling only a little from the sudden subject swap. “I- yes? _Why would it do that???_ ”

“I don’t know. You are one of half a dozen people in history who can do this. It’s not exactly in medical journals.”

The leg is, objectively, disgusting. Slowly flowing out from the limb, bone and marrow and muscle and blood vessels and skin. Not in a single sharp line, but in waves, of a sort. The bone ahead of the rest. Then nerves and blood vessels. The rest forms around that. Fascinating (or repulsive) to watch. But painful as hell incarnate to experience.

Joe is being brave for him.

It is agony. But Nicky has him in his arms, is talking to him. It’s easier than lying in the street was. 

“Are you suggesting you’d like to write a paper? Get it peer-reviewed and published?” he asks, the smile a little wearier. “What journal would we even publish it to?”

“One that we write in and then burn. Just like all the rest, Joe.”

Andy pokes her head in. “Got it. Let’s go.”

Nicky adjusts his hold on Joe and grunts as he stands. “You’re heavy,” he says. “Got rocks in your pockets?”

“Yes,” Joe answers. “Picked ‘em up and thought of you. They’re pretty.” Really though, he’s about a quarter lighter than normal.

“If they’re pretty it wasn’t me you were thinking about,” he says drily. “You got a girlfriend on the side?”

Andy flashes him a strange look as she leads the way to a beat-up old car and holds open the back door for them to climb in.

Nicky sets Joe gently on the seat and goes around to the other side, pulling off his backpack and laying it and their weapons on the floor before sliding in and pulling Joe back into his arms.

“Ha- you? Not pretty?” Joe snickers. It’s a funny joke. He’s just glad he happened to not have his sword on this time. Small mercies. He doesn’t want to imagine how that would have gone, if the state police decided to have some fun with it, and him. They did a fine enough job with the pipe alone.

“You hear this, Andy? The love of my life, hedging the question. I think I’ve found him out,” he says as she puts the car in gear and pulls out onto the street, heading away from the protests and hopefully the checkpoints too.

Joe laughs, adjusting his position in the car with a low groan. Getting blood all over the back seat. He can’t do much for that. It isn’t as if the healing is a bloodless process, with so much gone. “You did. After nine-hundred years, I have found a woman who earned more than a passing glance from me. My sordid, dark secret, uncovered.”

“Yeah she’s in the front seat and she wouldn’t fuck you if you begged her to,” quips Andy from her spot behind the wheel.

“Thank God,” replies Nicky. “I couldn’t possibly compete.”

“It’s good you know that,” she fires back, keeping an eye on the rear view mirror. No pursuit. Yet. But she won’t consider them clear until they’re back with Booker and well out of the country.

Joe laughs. “I don’t think I could pass her standards, either,” he assures Nicky. Leaning back into his arms, glancing down. This is perhaps the most grievous of his wounds in quite some time. It’s only healed around the knee thus far, and a little below. 

“What do you need?” Nicky asks, tucking his chin over Joe’s head. He misses the curls. The beard. His baby-faced lover is barely recognisable.

“My sword,” Joe says softly. “Left it in the safehouse.”

“We’re headed there anyways,” says Andy. “Need to check for Booker. You two stay in the car. I’ll go in alone.”

“I’d cover your six if I could, boss,” Joe answers. He’s aware he’s a liability at the moment. Until his damn leg grows back. 

“Nicky, keep guard on the car.” And Joe. “I go in alone.”

He nods, torn between protecting her and protecting him. Pulls Joe’s pistol off the floor and shifts so he can move away from him quickly. “Be quick,” he says.

“Aren’t I always?” She flashes a grin and disappears.

Joe huffs a soft laugh. “I wouldn’t call her always _quick_. But she certainly is thorough.”

Nicky nods, eyes wide. Terrifyingly so, at times.

Booker is there. With dust in his hair and a wild look in his eyes, holed up in the safe house and waiting to see if they’ll arrive. “You made it,” he says, a lip quirked upwards in that tired amusement he always carries. “You get Joe out?”

“Had to leave his leg behind, but yes. You ready to go?” She’s already gathering up their bags of clothes and weapons. Time to clear out.

“Jesus,” he says, taking a last swig of his flask. “Yeah. I’m good.” He’d packed whatever of their stuff he could find, grabs his own bag and one of theirs - Nicky’s and Joe’s belongings were somewhat impossible to tell apart - and moves to follow her. 

“We’ll head straight for that car we stashed and swap out. You have any problems on your little chase scene?” she asks as she pushes the door open and makes a beeline for the car.

He’s hefting both bags on his shoulders, but she’s got the sword and more bags. “Nope. Well- I did, until I threw the car off the road.”

“Threw, huh? Hulk-style? You been training while we weren’t paying attention?” She pops the trunk and tosses the bags in. “Your sword’s here, Yusuf. You want it up there with you?” 

Booker just shakes his head and snorts, climbing in the front seat, scanning around the street for any threats. 

“Yes, please,” Joe replies immediately. He doesn’t have a weapon otherwise. Not that he’s much use in a fight at the moment, anyway. 

She hands it over the seat to him, hilt first.

Joe takes it, pulling it into his lap since he can’t swing it over his shoulder. Good enough. The weight in his hands feels right. The only thing that belongs there more is Nicky. 

“Good to have you back,” says Nicky as Booker joins them. “Nice job with that distraction back there.” He hands Joe the pistol, holding his hand out for Joe’s sword. They can set it down on the floor where he can reach it but doesn’t have to hold it in these tight quarters.

Joe makes the trade, setting his sword down and tucking the pistol into his pants. Groaning, shifting his leg as it reminds him of its excruciating existence. 

Nicky takes the sword, laying it alongside his on top of the other weapons. Hilts side-by-side and in easy reach.

Andy drives like she’s being chased by hellhounds. Has decided that the good they can perhaps do matters less than the safety of her people. Of her family. So she’s going to get them out of the country and somewhere safe until Joe has the correct number of limbs again. 

Nicky fishes an SMG out of the bag at his feet and holds it in his lap, craning his neck to watch out the back window. Much as he’d love to, now is not the time for cuddling. 

Booker is watching out the side, checking the rearview mirrors. A handgun in between his legs, ready. They all know the danger.

Nicky reaches between the seats, gripping Booker’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he says. They’re all in it together. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate what his little brother did to get Joe out.

“Had to keep you from clockin’ me somehow,” Booker answers, glancing over his shoulder with the corner of his lip pulled up. He’d seen Nicky’s face. The fury and rage and instinctual need to fight off anything keeping him from Joe.

Part of him hates that. Wishes he knew what it felt like.

But they’re family. His family, now. He’s always going to have their backs.

Nicky pats Booker’s arm and sits back to watch out the back window, sparing first Joe, and then his leg, a glance.

It’s slow going. The leg, that is. The drive is a rush of ground being eaten up by old wheels. But Joe’s leg is taking its sweet time. Still just at the top of his shin. He’s breathing slow, deliberately. Trying to ignore the pain. It’s harder, in the quiet.

“Book, you got painkillers?” Nicky asks.

“Always,” he replies, fishing in a pack and tossing a bottle over his shoulder into the back. It rattles as Nicky catches it one-handed.

Joe perks up at the sound, holding his palm out for the bottle. Whether Nicky wants to pour it or not is up to him.

He hands it over. Joe has two perfectly functional hands and Nicky still needs to keep watch.

Joe twists it open, popping three pills into his mouth and shutting it again, tucking the bottle into a pocket. He’s earned dibs on it for the next little while.

Nobody will argue that point. Earned is most definitely the word for it. 

They pull up next to the car they’d left parked behind a petrol station next to a bunch of derelict beaters, and Booker gets out to check it for tampering. A minute later he flashes the all clear and Andy slips out, popping the trunk to unload their gear. 

Nicky hauls himself out of the back seat and makes his way around to Joe’s side. “Hop or carry?” he asks, leaving it up to Joe. 

Joe does not have any pretentions, not any longer. Nor does he feel the need to prove himself. “Carry’s fine. If I’m not too heavy,” he adds, grinning.

“Never,” Nicky declares as he pulls Joe into his arms. “Not even with those pretty rocks.”

He laughs, pressing a kiss to his love’s jaw, wrapping his arms around him and holding on. Trusting him to get their swords. 

The swords aren’t as important. Nicky gets Joe into the back seat before yes, going back for the swords and other weapons. He doesn’t like to be without his sword either. The comforting weight at his hip. The leather so perfectly worn to his palm. Nicky understands Joe’s attachment.

Joe would sacrifice his sword if he had to. Would sacrifice his before Nicky’s, any day. But there was something to having a piece of steel at his side that had been there for as long as Nicky had. The steel that _brought_ him to Nicolo, first through his stomach, then through his ribs, then at his side. It is a piece of home, a home that no longer exists save in their souls, and he would be loathe to lose it. But not at the cost of Nicky, though the situation has never arisen yet.

In any case, it’s not necessary to even consider sacrificing their swords today. Nicky sets them against the seat, hilts-up. Stuffs the open weapons bag under them and piles in. The others can get the rest.

The others have already loaded the rest while Nicky pretended to work, and are currently climbing into the front seat, Andy back behind the wheel. She beat Booker to it.

Joe leans up between the seats, smiling at the both of them. “If you could find a road that was paved sometime in the last decade, I would greatly appreciate it,” he says, though his voice is fond. The jostling is hell on his leg, though. And the rest of him, if he’s being whiny. Which, he thinks he’s earned the right to do that too.

Nicky sighs and pulls Joe into his lap, very, very careful of the leg as he shifts him.

He allows himself to be pulled back, exhaling slow as he’s shifted. “You got them out, yes?” he asks. Realizing he didn’t, in fact, know. If the students made it out safe while he was being made an example of.

“Yes. Andy made me get them out before we could rescue you,” Nicky assures him.

“I did too,” Booker adds, tossing a cheeky grin over his shoulder.

“Your idiot nearly lost his mind twice while you pulled that stunt,” says Andy. “We both had to threaten him back into his senses.”

Nicky ducks his head, slightly abashed. Yet for all that he is, he’d do it again in a heartbeat. Joe in danger is not something he just stands by and _watches._

“I’m sorry, my love,” Joe says gently. “I did not know you were watching.” 

He mutters something in Italian, words soft and clipped, the gist being: _Of course I was fucking watching. No, I went for coffee while they were torturing him in the street… The screaming adds flavor._

Joe exhales, a sound almost close to a laugh, though pained. “ _I had hoped it was the students keeping you busy_ ,” he explains. 

_“You can keep me busy later to make up for it,”_ he says, pressing a kiss to Joe’s smooth (so wrong) cheek. 

_“You know I will always happily do that,_ ” Joe replies, tilting into the touch. As soon as he can walk again, he’s going to push Nicky right up into the wall and kiss him until all he tastes is the sweetness of his lips and whatever he’d eaten last, instead of asphalt and smoke.

Fuckit. Nicky kisses him now, smoke be damned. Pressing the horror of watching that and the staggering relief of having him back, into Joe’s mouth with something akin to desperation.

Joe kisses him back for all he’s worth, a hand gripping his jaw, missing the short hair he’d always tangle his fingers in, lips parting in an effort to lose all the space between them. The space that Nicky had to cross to get to him, to cut his leg off and free him. To chase all of that darkness away with the warmth of his lips, the beating of his heart against his chest. 

Booker takes a long drink.

Andy glares at Booker, then shakes her head at the two in the back. “Get a room,” she says, mostly fondly. 

Nicky flashes her an obscene gesture without stopping. 

Joe would answer, tell her that she needs to find them one, but he is otherwise occupied. And more than happy to be. It is a welcome distraction to the regrowth, the sinew and bone pushing out of his leg- 

Much better to be kissing Nicky, and thinking of none of that. 

Nicky pulls away, reluctantly. He still has to keep an eye out. But he takes Joe’s hand, weaving their fingers together. 

They drive until the glare of the sun hits the rearview mirror with blinding strength, until they’ve left the country and Booker starts looking up places they can stay. A hotel, perhaps, the kind with kitchens in the rooms. Or else a cottage on short-term rental. Often, he does this, and Andy pulls out an ancient safehouse, a place long abandoned and forgotten, tucked away in the corner of an otherwise-lively city. Or a dead one. Full of the ghosts of a past that she remembered still. 

This time, they settle for the live-in hotel. It is small, with a courtyard shaded by trees and a fountain in the center and none of that matters except for the fact that it appears, to Booker’s honed instincts, to be private. That’s all they need.

He shows it to Andy, who simply nods once, trusting his expertise on the matter, and he books it ahead of their arrival in the next twenty minutes. How they’ll get Joe in is a different matter, but perhaps there are other entrances than past what must be an idle and inattentive front desk.

“We need to change our clothes,” Nicky points out. He and Joe are covered in blood. 

“And wash your face,” adds Andy. 

He glances in the rearview mirror, eyes going wide at the swath of red-brown bisecting his reflection. 

“Surely there must be some old bathhouse around here,” Joe says, stroking a thumb under Nicky’s eye, pulling away a little of the crust of blood there. He remembers when they numbered by the dozens along roads like this. He remembers how he and Nicolo would stop at them, enjoy washing the dirt and grime of travel off themselves. Enjoy the press of each others’ clean bodies, alone in the cool water and the warmth of the desert air. 

There had to be at least a few left standing, no?

“How can you think about sex at a time like this,” Nicky huffs. He knows his love too well. 

“Bold words from the man who asked if I wasn’t glad that my leg did not regrow first as a _miniature version of itself_.” Really, does not his train of thought at least make more sense?

“That is repulsive on a number of levels,” he says. 

So many, _many_ levels. 

“ _You_ are the one who came up with it,” Joe fires back.

“I was talking. About. _Baths,_ ” he fumes. 

“No, you were asking how I could be thinking about sex. I am merely saying it is a far more understandable pattern of thought to your question about my _leg_.”

“Your leg is right there. Growing at me. No one is trying to have sex with you.”

“Jury’s out on that one,” says Booker. 

Joe bursts out laughing. “You’ve seen me at worse than this,” he points out. Surely this must be better than all the times his face had been ruined, by rock or bullet or cannonball.

“I don’t believe you _get_ worse than this.”

“No? Not even in Moscow, back in ‘42?” He recalls that time being one particular standout for Nicky being entirely upset with the state he’d come back to life in - and very much insisting he was not attractive.

“I was not speaking of the physical,” he says drily. 

Joe smirks. “I _could_ be worse, if I didn’t want to keep my head.” He’s under no delusions that Andy would not free him of this round’s mortal coil if he got too insufferable.

“And don’t you forget it,” Andy replies. 

She’s the scary one. She knows it. Everyone knows it. And she makes sure to remind them just often enough. 

“Never, boss,” he says.

She pulls into an old gas station to grab some jackets. It’d do until they got in and got washed up. She comes back with an armful of jackets a few minutes later and a barely-cold soda or three for them and tossing Nicky a bottle of water before climbing back into the car and taking off again. They’re not far from the hotel now, and the sooner they get there the sooner she can post up and keep watch over her idiots.

Nicky opens the bottle, using it to clean the blood off his hands and face. Does the same for Joe’s hands and eyes his emerging leg. “Need to get some intact pants on you,” he says, assessing.

“Could just wrap a jacket around it for now,” Joe suggests. He doubts there’s any way otherwise to get past without raising suspicion. He has _bone_ visible. Most people would faint on sight.

“You guys get checked in. I’ll bring him in the side once we have a room.”

Or that. That’s probably smarter. Joe’s a little tired, what with the amount of healing he’s undergoing at the moment. And how damn _slow_ it is. 

“Sure,” Booker says, as Andy pulls into the old, dusty parking lot. He grabs his duffel - the one with fewer weapons in it - and grabs his documents to carry in. His past as a forger is only as useful as his efforts to keep it in practice and stay up to date, which he does.

“Bring a blanket too. It’ll hide the leg better than a jacket.” Nicky starts gathering the weapons up, tossing them in the bag by his feet.

Yes, Joe supposes it would. He helps with the loading, grabbing a bag that he can hang onto to help cover his leg as he’ll be carried. It makes even less sense to hop this distance, after all.

Booker comes out a few minutes later, dangling the room key and its long keychain for them to see that it’s clear.

Andy steps around him, coming back to grab the last of the bags and toss Nicky a blanket. He wraps it carefully around Joe’s lower half and lifts him up into his arms. “How’s that feel?” Nicky asks him once he’s standing.

“As fine as it can,” Joe says, breathing through his teeth. It hurts. But soon he’ll be put down somewhere and not have to move until his leg is back and it’ll all be fine. He heals. He saved others from a fate they wouldn’t heal from. Better him than anyone else.

Nicky carries him up the stairs to their floor, huffing a bit by the time they reach the room. But better that than have someone get too close a look in the elevator. Booker holds open the door for them as Nicky steps through, turning towards the couch.

Once they’re inside, Booker snags the car keys from Andy before ducking back into the hall and letting the door close behind him.

“Bathroom?” he asks before he gets ahead of himself.

Joe shakes his head.”I’ll clean up when I’m not still creating blood,” he answers tiredly. And when he can walk himself there. Best to just do one round.

He sets him down on the couch. Kisses his temple. “Need anything before I get cleaned up, or are you going to nap this one out?”

“I’ll be right here, waiting for you to return to my arms,” Joe says tiredly, though he smiles warm up at him.

Nicky sighs, shaking his head with a slow smile. “You are impossible, and I will be in the next room.”

“Would you still love me were I not?” he asks, tipping his head back over the old couch to watch his retreating back.

“Probably, but less,” he says without looking back. Still smiling.

Stepping into the bathroom and closing the door gently behind him.

He has Joe’s blood under his nails.

Of all the blood he’s had to wash off over the centuries, he hates Joe’s the most.

His hands don’t shake as he washes them. Don’t they? He can’t tell. The room just got watery. He scrubs and scrubs and scrubs his hands. Wets a cloth and blindly drags that over his face. His too-short hair. The back of his neck.

He can’t seem to get the feel of the axe in his hands, out of his head. The searing of scalding blood across his skin.

The screams. Far away, then close. And the deafening silence that followed later.

_Fuck._

Nicky is taking too long. Shit. Joe can’t go to him, help him, remind him that he’s still here. Still alive. In a lot less pain now than he was before Nicolo’s arms pulled him out of there. But he’s stuck on this couch and Nicky is in there and the water is running and running and running. 

Joe knows that means he’s stuck in his own head, caught in the viscera and the pain. And Joe is always there to pull him back to him. To his arms, to the warmth, to the safety of knowing they are both eternal and endless and still _here_. 

Except he can’t reach him right now.

Joe moves to stand, aware that Booker has already left to go find them food and Andy has disappeared to somewhere else in the suite and Nicky _needs_ him.

Andy appears by his side. “Sit,” she says. “I’ll check on him.”

The two men might be a unit, but Andy’s been a part of them since almost the beginning. She can read them almost as well as they can each other. They’re hers too.

Joe drops back onto the couch with a defeated sort of wheeze, letting her take over. Trusting her to. At the end of it all, he knew he could trust Andy with his heart. To make sure Nicky was okay. That he wasn’t stuck in there, stuck in his head, unable to find his way back. To help him break of it sooner. 

She doesn’t bother knocking. If he cared that much about his privacy he’d lock the door. And then she’d pound on it until he let her in. But it’s not locked, so she just opens it to find him bowed over the sink with a cloth dangling from his fingertips, staring at nothing and breathing hard.

With soft words and a hand on his shoulder, she steers him out of the bathroom and towards the couch.

He knows her tone. Her presence. 

He knows she doesn’t know how to knock.

And lets her guide him. Back to Joe when he can’t seem to make his feet or his eyes work.

She picks up Joe’s hand. Puts it in Nicky’s, and leaves them to it, going off to take a shower. They’ve got it from here.

Joe takes Nicky’s hand, squeezes, and then pulls him down onto the couch. Were he more maneuverable, he’d pull Nicky under him and just hold him down with his weight, warmth and a reminder. But he will have to settle for having Nicky next to him, for pulling him down on top of himself, should it come to that. Sometimes a change in angle was all that was needed to jar the thoughts. 

“ _My love_ ,” he breathes in old Latin, his other hand reaching up to cup his cheek, to pull that sightless gaze back to him. “ _I am right here, and so are you. You brought me out of there and saved me, like all of those times you tease of getting to rescue me,_ ” he murmurs, voice low against Nicky’s cheek, against his ear. Hoping to bring his focus with the softness of the words, of his tone.

“Rescuing you sucks,” he says, voice cracking. “Next time it’s your turn.” But he’s smiling now, through the tears.

“I will note it down in my journals next to my morning sketch of you, and it will be so,” he reassures. Aches that he put Nicky through this pain. Even though he would not have made a different decision. This pain, their pain, it is temporary. It heals with all the time they have, all the time they will spend together. They have spared others a more permanent suffering by taking it on themselves. Joe will never regret that, and he knows Nicky does not either. Even as it hurts now. 

“You’re here. We’re together. That’s all that matters,” Nicky says, reminding himself out loud.

“It is. It is all that has mattered for the last nine hundred years,” Joe agrees, pressing a kiss to the corner of his jaw. Another to the hollow of his cheek. Drawing a line from his ear to his lips, pausing at the corner of them. A light brush, a tender touch.

Nicky turns into it, parting his lips to breathe Joe in as he shifts on his axis. Somehow the touch and the words are enough to right him. Joe can always do that, so easily.

Every near loss drives home how incomplete he’d be without him. And every time, it takes Joe to bring him back.

Joe knows the pain. The fear. Intimately, every time he loses Nicky and has to fight around him and stay by his side until he returns. He holds on to his conviction. That they entered this together and they will leave it together too, and so any time Nicky is dead and he is not, cannot be the last time. That is his faith, now. Nicky and the certainty that he will be with him until it is time for them both to rest.

So he kisses him, lips parted, breathing him in and tasting him and reminding him what it is to be alive. For their hearts to beat together, rushed or slow and everything in between. 

Nicky lets himself get lost in it. In him. In the touch, so familiar yet never old. As welcome as coming home. Hand on Joe’s jaw. Thumb stroking across his cheekbone. He misses the beard. The familiar rough, rather than this smooth farce. Its loss a stupid necessity. He thinks they should go find a house somewhere and refuse to wear any clothes or leave until Joe has his lovely beard and hair back.

That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Joe would agree. The fuzz is unbecoming on Nicky, though if one asked he would say it is impossible to make Nicky ugly. It simply isn’t his favorite. He likes to run his hands through hair just long enough for him to grip and _pull_ and this is not that.

And he thinks, hopes, that the revolution will succeed, even without them. Three weeks was a long time and the activists had not lost their fire yet. He doubts they would for a long time still. Their conviction ran strong, driving them on the only path they knew, toward a revolution no matter the cost to the country.

What he does not yet know, what none of them know yet, is that it will succeed. A dozen videos will circulate of a beating so vicious, so cruel, of man who vanishes during it and never reappears, that the furious demand for justice will crescendo until the government topples. It will only take a week more.

All Joe knows is that he could do with a little rest. A little time to just have Nicky to himself and for Nicky to have him. To wake up slow and lazy and spend the day drawing him, breathing him in, roll atop him or be pushed against the counter or anything in between. 

He would like that. Very much. He always does. 

They don’t even notice Andy return, and she leaves them to it, largely ignoring them. She’s seen worse. Or more, at least.

Nicky finally comes up for air when Booker returns with arms full of groceries. “Think you can pry yourself off him long enough to keep us from starving?” he says as he sets the groceries on the kitchen counter.

“No but I will anyways,” comes Nicky’s reply.

He wonders what unholy combination Booker came up with this time.

Just as Nicky bets Booker that he can find pastries Andy can’t place, so this is one of Booker’s rituals with them. Albeit perhaps a more self-destructive one. Booker comes back with things that are least likely to go together in any sort of palatable fashion, and sees what Nicky can do with them. Nicky, damn him, almost always manages to find a way to make something delicious. He doesn’t know how the man does it. Nor is he particularly interested in learning.

Just in besting him, some time.

It’s a welcome activity. Nicky’s thoughts rarely overwhelm him when he’s moving. Doing something. Focused. And cooking is one of his favourite things. Finding unique ways of combining flavor and texture is how he gets to take care of the rest. Joe always makes them laugh. Andy gets them all the best weapons. Booker does the planning.

Nicky cooks.

He keeps an eye on Joe as he chops herbs and vegetables. Sears the meat. Adds just the right amount of seasoning. Booker has a deck of cards and is playing some variety of solitaire while nursing an ever-present drink.

The sounds from the kitchen are punctuated by the smooth, quiet grating of whetstone on steel as Andy hones her labrys, occasionally raising her gaze to level accusation at Joe for having the hardest bones known to man, or Nicky for the worst aim.

By her bitching you’d think they broke it in two. The thing’s not even nicked, except where her obvious senility is making her see things. Which Nicky of course says aloud.

“It’s your advanced age catching up to you.”

She throws the stone at him.

He barely manages to snag it before it lands in the pan and he glares before gently underhanding it back to her.

“Lippy little shit,” she says as she goes back to sharpening.

“It is why you love us,” Joe points out helpfully, as he leans against the corner of the couch to watch his love cook. The way Nicky seems so smooth, at ease, in the kitchen, akin to how he does when he is on a long night with the sniper rifle in his hands. It is a strange comparison to make, but not for Joe. He is at peace like this. 

Nicky flashes a grin over his shoulder. “You forgive me because I feed you.”

She glares and sharpens louder, but a smile sneaks out of the corner of her mouth as she watches her own hand curve along the axe blade, over and over and over.

“Smells good,” Booker says from his spot at the table, unbothered by the petty squabbling.

“What did you give him this time, Booker?” Joe asks, pulling his leg up to turn and face Nicky better, laying across the couch. 

“Dates. Lamb. Pecans. Eggplant. Tomatoes. What else?” he asks, not recalling any longer. He pulls things as he spots them, and then carries on shopping. 

“One of these days you will actually bring me ingredients I cannot work with,” Nicky says as he slides steaming food from the pans onto plates. “And then we will all pay the price.” He brings two laden plates to the kitchen table before putting utensils in his back pocket and carrying the other two plates to the coffee table, setting them and the utensils in front of Joe.

Booker snorts, but he pours a drink from his flask to a glass, and then clears away his solitaire to avoid getting food on his cards as Andy approaches. And then digs into a meal which, he has to admit, smells delicious. He’d swear Nicky was smuggling in ingredients if he didn’t know he barely had room for the weapons and Joe in his arms. 

Nicky moves a plate to the couch next to Joe, sitting down on the coffee table across from him, his own plate balanced on his lap. Knees touching the couch. As close as he can get to Joe and still leave them enough room to eat.

Joe takes the plate, setting it on his lap and smiling soft at Nicky as he sits down across from him. As their legs touch, his own now healed most of the way to the ankle. 

Nicky presses his foot to Joe’s as he slowly eats, savoring the fruits of his labors and shooting a knowing look at the obscene noises coming from the two at the table. Apparently the meal turned out okay.

Joe laughs in soft amusement, digging in. It is _fantastic,_ as his heart’s cooking always is. He groans as the taste seeps through him, warmth and the smell of home and all his aches washing away with it. “This is delicious, love,” he murmurs softly, pressing close. 

The words warm Nicky more than the meal. That he can provide comfort through the pain. He lives for that. And this one way he can take care of the others. His way.

It does more for Joe than any painkillers ever do. The warmth of Nicky’s touch, of the food he makes for him. For all of them. But Nicky always finds a way to bring the taste of home to him. Perhaps anything made by him would taste like home.

“Almost there,” Nicky says, gazing at Joe’s slowly-forming foot as Andy gathers up the dishes to wash. 

Booker did the grocery shopping. Nicky did the cooking. Joe did the slacking off. (Also: the healing.) So Andy does the dishes.

Joe can do the dishes next time.

If it means Joe does not have to regrow a limb again? He will gladly do the dishes every time. Especially since he usually gets to launch soap bubbles at Nicky. Dishwashers are such a new innovation that most of their places do not have them.

“Bed?” Nicky asks.

“Please. I could do for a shower, but only if I have a leg to stand on by the time we get there,” he says.

“Then should I be the romantic knight and carry my love to the place we lay our heads together?”

Booker gags. Loudly.

Joe laughs. “That, or I can hobble pitifully at your side.”

“Romantic, it is!” Nicky grins as he sweeps Joe into his arms.

Usually Joe’s the romantic one.

Joe savors every time Nicky does things like this. It is not his usual way of showing affection. Of showing his love. He does it for Joe’s sake. So he grins, laughing, wrapping his arms around Nicky’s neck and pulling himself close, now almost entirely whole again. Save for his pants, which end, bloodied and ruined, and leave a brand new leg naked beneath.

“We will burn these clothes tomorrow,” Nicky says, making a face at where the pantleg ends in a sharp, encrusted line.

“Fantastic. Can we make s’mores over them?” they don’t get to make those often enough.

“Over burning synthetic fabrics? You’re better off using Booker’s C-4.”

“Oh, no you’re fuckin’ not. Go find some wood like normal people,” Booker fires back.

“From where?” Joe protests, curling in closer to Nicky’s chest. “We’re in the _desert_.”

“Use furniture, for all I care. C-4’s off limits.” Even though it’s perfectly safe to burn. It’s just a damn _waste_ of the stuff.

Nicky shrugs as he carries his now-thankfully-heavier burden to their room. “Ignore him. You’ll get your s’mores, one way or another.”

“And this is why I love you,” Joe says, with a smile as fond as the sun’s warmth. “You leave my every wish fulfilled.”

“Ha. You wish. You still don’t get sex in the kitchen.”

“One day. I have an eternity yet.”

“It may very well take that. But keep hoping.” He grins.

Joe grins back, and instead of answering, pulls him in and kisses him, and does not bother to come up for air for a long, long while.

This is all he needs. Nicky is the balm to soothe his every ache, the closing of every wound. They are together, they are alive, and they will be okay.

Always.

**Author's Note:**

> The uprising in mention took place in Tunisia in December of 2010, and was the beginning of the Arab Spring and a chain of revolutions across the region. this particular one resulted in an overthrow of the entire government, though the neighboring countries had varied success. I think (?) it's also referred to as one of, if not the, first social media revolution
> 
> Also! come hang out! We have a [discord!](https://discord.gg/kDJpjxx)


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